Karl Pearson

Theodore Porter is Professor of History at UCLA and author of "The Rise of Statistical Thinking" and "Trust in Numbers" (both Princeton)

"Theodore Porter's book on Pearson is not a biography in the conventional sense. It focuses on the early part of his career in an effort to show how he was drawn to the study of statistics and eventually conceived it as the key to a new philosophy of nature, which was to become his life's work... The great value of Porter's book is that this focus on the early phase of Pearson's career highlights the complex route by which his quest for emotional and intellectual satisfaction led him towards the project that would, in effect, create modern statistics."--Peter J. Bowler, Nature "[A] brilliant biography, one can hardly imagine a better summary of Karl Pearson's fascinating life and complicated persona... [Porter] reveals more about the origins, aspirations, and consequences of modern statistics than any technical treatise of the same length could possibly accomplish. As Porter emphasizes, Pearson's life was a tour de force [and] extremely fascinating to the reader."--Manfred D. Laubichler, Science "Porter's biography of the young Pearson, the statistician in embryo, exceeds all expectations in recreating the intellectual worlds in which Pearson tried to find a home. The breadth of the reading and the depth of interpretation are impressive... Porter shows us a young Pearson, clever and brave, who has a burning passion to understand things."--John Aldrich, American Scientist "This book is a remarkable achievement."--Jenny Marie, Journal of the History of Biology "Pearson's story can ... be read as a triumph of statistics in which a powerful intellect comes to see our field as a great source of enlightenment. As [Theodore M.] Porter writes in a wonderful first sentence, 'Beginning in 1892, when he took up statistics as his scientific vocation, Karl Pearson devoted himself relentlessly to a project of almost universal quantification.' That sentence very effectively conveys what I try to tell my students in a first statistics course, that this is a way of thinking which will allow them to see the world in a new and beautiful way, though I do hope that they avoid adopting Pearson's unwavering commitment that statistics is the only way to view the world."--Richard J. Cleary, The American Statistician "Theodore Porter's Karl Pearson explores the fullness and richness of Pearson's intellectual and emotional life, shows us how 'the toil of the years' led to the revolution he wrought in statistics... The book would ... be a source of both pleasure and profit to any serious reader."--Ramachandran Bharath, MAA Reviews

• Preface and Acknowledgments vii CHAPTER ONE Introduction: An Improbable Personage 1 CHAPTER TWO Lehrjahre of a Poetic Wrangler 13 CHAPTER THREE Apostle of Renunciation: A New Werther 43 CHAPTER FOUR Pearson's Progress: A Nineteenth-Century Passion Play 69 CHAPTER FIVE Cultural Historian in a Political Age 91 CHAPTER SIX Intellectual Love and the Woman Question 125 CHAPTER SEVEN Ether Squirts and the Inaccessibility of Nature 178 CHAPTER EIGHT Scientific Education and Graphical Statistics 215 CHAPTER NINE The Statistical Reformation 249 CHAPTER TEN Epilogue: Composing a Life 297 Bibliography 315 Index 329